[Poll] City Metric, City Report, City Forecast, and Seneschal

[Marisa]

I am currently feeling a bit down on the system, especially as it turns out I am lumped in with a shared court GL vote, as I have bank access, which means I apparently forfeit my right to my own vote as a noble. If I vote, I'm overwriting whatever Emma or Margaux has done, which is not what I want to do. I really am not comfortable voting as a GL as I'm not really. It also wasn't clear I was overwriting anyone, which I now feel bad about. I think GL votes should only count for the real GL positions, that show on guildleaders, and I don't think that GLs should have to share one vote when they should legitimately have a vote of their own.

The timing also feels really quick. I've appreciated Hunapo's coordinating mails and I have had conversations about the state of city metrics, especially the ones that have had obvious effects, but I don't have enough RP time in a week to have follow up RP on a scene. I haven't been able to catch Hunapo at all. It feels like everything has changed again before I can get more than a circumstantial scene in. I think it would be much better at a little slower cadence.

[Dice]

I can actually respond to this: As Seneschal I know exactly who voted how, and there are two ways to vote.

You can vote in the affirmative: city support <metric> <reasoning> (Note the reasoning needs to be added to the help file). This is a vote to try and improve that particular metric.

Right, but what is a vote ICly? Am I saying "Someone should do something about health" and health gets better? Am I saying "spend the city's money on health"? Am I investing my own money in health? Am I actually going out and giving medicine to the poor?

I can't RP about the system when I don't know what IC action a coded vote represents, is my point.

Also, I kinda think there should be RPA'able ways to figure out votes for non-Seneschal folks - after all, with your emphasis on "can" tell...

Marisa: Oh man I THOUGHT this was happening to me but wasn't sure! Is this not a bug?

[Geras]

Can I get a TL;DR version of how this works right now?

[Gerolf]

Can I get a TL;DR version of how this works right now?

Nobles and GLs can "Vote" on city metrics moving them up or down. The other metrics change in response to those votes.

As a metric moves different things happen at different thresholds. Good things when the score is high, bad things when the score is low.

Also, I kinda think there should be RPA'able ways to figure out votes for non-Seneschal folks - after all, with your emphasis on "can" tell...

Oh I didn't mean to imply that not Seneschal folks shouldn't be able to RPA it. I just meant there is a way to do it without RPA. Also I only said can, because the position rotates, someone else may be more secretive, the next person may post everyone's vote every week in church square.

And Marisa, are you sure about that? Last week you showed up as Marisa in the list not as court.... Seems buggy either way. That does show another good point I can't tell if Emma or Marg made the court vote that week, so I do support giving each GL and 2GL their own, trackable vote. Otherwise I have to assume all of the Merchants want better health when really Galen wanted better health buy Yvonne wanted better Class Relations. (as an example)

[Kinaed]

Re: Marisa

Apologies Marisa got caught up in that. As far as I know, she's the only non-GL set as a GL for command purposes who was impacted by that, but I'll have Az have a look. Sadly, with only about five votes going through in any given week, we can't let noble GLs vote twice. That would skew the math and over-represent their power by a large margin.

Re:Dice

We decided to leave it ambiguous what a player was doing to improve a metric to allow them to decide rather than providing a narrow range of options. It's a bit like how you can often emote when using a command rather than having fixed output.

If the question is "is my character actually doing something ICly to support this metric?", the answer is intended to be yes - but it's up to you if your character is asking their servants to give out medicine or funding the local meals on wheels - it can happen offscreen or onscreen. This intent is for players to be able to pick what suits their character's personality, etc. That being said, a character can do these things, but there's no guarantee how it will impact the city metrics until after everyone's activities are taken into account at the end.

So... having heard a few concerns, can people suggest improvements?

[Pixie]

As I understand it nobles are supposed to get a vote each, and GLs are supposed to get a vote each. If a noble is also a GL, they should have one vote, not two.

Right now, though, Court members who are also nobles don't get to vote at all. Whatever their vote is is overridden by the Court GL (me or Marg). I think that's what Marisa is referencing. Not that noble GLs should get two votes, but that they should have one vote -- being a member of Court shouldn't negate the vote they'd get to cast as a noble. The way it is, it's more advantageous for a noble to just leave the guild.

I think this has already been reported as a bug, though -- it came up the other day, and someone mentioned they'd put up a bug note.

[Kinaed]

That sounds like a serious bug. Has anyone reported it on the in-game bug board?

[Pixie]

Updated my post as you were writing yours! I am about 90% sure Margaux reported it the other night.

[Dice]

I am also having the guild/noble problem, being a noble with GL permissions in the Order - my vote is superseded by the Order's vote, I think. I didn't report it because I haven't really been using the system.

The ambiguity in the votes is, for me, not a feature but a problem; it makes the system almost cripplingly weird. If the Council is not an actual council, why can only people who meet these criteria 'vote' without having to spend IP? What sort of social power to affect things do nobles have that very rich gentry suddenly don't? Etc., etc. Also, the Seneschal trying to get us all to focus our efforts on the same thing seems a bit strange as well, because what efforts are we focusing? I really would prefer some definition myself, and will find the system hard to use and RP around without it.

That said, the suggestions about lengthening and IC-event reporting the cycles are, to me, the most critical issues to patch asap.

[Voxumo]

Re:Dice

We decided to leave it ambiguous what a player was doing to improve a metric to allow them to decide rather than providing a narrow range of options. It's a bit like how you can often emote when using a command rather than having fixed output.

If the question is "is my character actually doing something ICly to support this metric?", the answer is intended to be yes - but it's up to you if your character is asking their servants to give out medicine or funding the local meals on wheels - it can happen offscreen or onscreen. This intent is for players to be able to pick what suits their character's personality, etc. That being said, a character can do these things, but there's no guarantee how it will impact the city metrics until after everyone's activities are taken into account at the end.

So... having heard a few concerns, can people suggest improvements?

Ok I may be completely misunderstanding this, but what about making the voting syntax something like Support Syntax? Where it goes something like Vote <Metric> <Up/Down> How. This would allow people the choice to put whatever they want for how they are affecting the Metric, but also make it so that how they are affecting it is clearly evident.

Of course I've never used the system so I could be completely misunderstanding it.